The joint venture between the Volkswagen Group and Sweden’s battery manufacturer Northvolt is taking shape. The partners have now decided that the buildings and infrastructure for the planned joint battery cell factory ‘Northvolt Zwei’ will be built by Volkswagen itself.

Volkswagen and Northvolt want to increase the capacity of their battery cell factory in Salzgitter, Germany, by 50 per cent. The joint venture plans to submit the building application for the already planned expansion in March.

The Volkswagen-Northvolt cooperation is taking off as they launch a first pilot production for battery cells at Volkswagen’s Salzgitter plant. Production is to scale up to 16 GWh at the end of 2023 with Volkswagen investing around €1Bn.

In Braunschweig, Germany, Volkswagen’s first employee charging park went into operation with 60 charging points. By 2025, 4,000 charging points are to be created at ten locations across Germany.

The partner for Volkswagen’s decision to start mass production of battery cells for electric cars will not be the South Korean manufacturer SK Innovation as was rumoured. Rather, the German carmaking giant is turning to the Swedish startup Northvolt for all its battery requirements.

Volkswagen’s supervisory board has announced the automaker’s entry into battery cell production and is ready to invest one billion euros. Depending on the political circumstance, VW wants to set-up production in Germany at its Salzgitter site in Lower Saxony.

The recently announced Volkswagen pilot plant for recycling electric car battery materials in Salzgitter, which will go into operation in 2020, is designed to initially produce 1,200 tonnes per year. The project in Salzgitter is to be followed by further recycling plants in the next few years.

Volkswagen is looking into mass production of battery cells together with SK Innovation, according to German media. Their cooperation could see them setting up and operate multiple battery cell “Gigafactories” in Europe.